It’s a matter of time before the HID bulb on your 2nd Gen Lexus IS350 goes out. Sometimes the failure can be intermittent with it sometimes working and other times not. It can also fail by simply burning out completely. It’s not difficult to replace the HID bulbs on the 2nd Gen Lexus IS350. You just need to make sure you remove a few things in the engine bay that get in the way when replacing the HID bulbs. Removing some of these parts not only provides you with access to the HID bulbs, but it also gives you room to work.
It’s not the question of if your Lexus IS350 remote key will eventually go out, but when. After some time the small coin battery inside of your remote key will eventually go dead and you’ll need to replace it. It usually comes at the most inopportune time, but luckily the IS350 key is easy to take apart even without the use of any tools; all you need is a replacement battery.
On the second generation Lexus IS350 (years 2006 through 2013), Lexus recommends checking your engine air filter every 6 months (or 5,000 miles) and replacing it every 36 months (or 30,000 miles), whichever comes first. The time that it takes to replace the engine air filter is essentially the same as the amount of time it takes to inspect. This is due to the fact that the majority of the time spent doing either is in removing the engine cover and air duct. Therefore, it may be easier to simply replace the engine air filter at the replacement interval. However, if you live in an are that might have more severe environmental conditions, you may consider being more zealous with your inspection schedule.
On the second generation Lexus IS350 (years 2006 through 2013), Lexus recommends checking your cabin air filter (or as they call it, air conditioning filter) every 5,000 miles and replacing it every 10,000 miles. This might be a bit more aggressive of a maintenance schedule as you might typically see, with many paper cabin air filters typically requiring replacement every 24 months or about 30,000 miles. Regardless, you should be at checking your cabin air filter on a regular basis to ensure that it is not clogged up with dirt and debris.
In the time that I’ve had my 2006 Lexus IS350, I’ve had a couple issues with the touch screen. One issue was the notorious frozen touch screen issue where the digitizer has failed. The second issue was the head unit screen going completely blank. The screen was totally black even though the car was on. This issue had a quick fix, which was to check the interior fuse box. Thankfully that took care of the issue before I had to go further with additional troubleshooting or worse, a full head unit replacement.
It’s common on Toyota and Lexus vehicles that when your check engine light comes on, it also triggers other warning lights to come on as well such as the ‘CHECK VSC’ warning on the multi-information display, or even the traction control light. When this happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the there is something wrong with the VSC (Vehicle Stability Control) system.
The 2nd gen Lexus IS350 has a multi-information display and a warning light (exclamation mark inside of an amber colored triangle) to inform the driver of various warning messages. With regards to the oil maintenance on the Lexus IS350, a couple messages may appear depending on whether the engine oil maintenance is required soon, or if the oil maintenance is required now.
I got an engine code P0348 on our 2006 Lexus IS350, which led me to believe there was an issue with the camshaft position sensor A, bank 2. It turns out that the sensor connector had a wire that had broken off. To repair this, you will need to either splice the wire back into a terminal lead to be plugged back into the connector, or a new harness can be used to replace the old.
Replacing the spark plugs is not a difficult job to do; the hardest part of it all is removing all of the connectors and various ducts while keeping track of them all. Besides that, as long as you have all the necessary tools, parts, and materials, you should have no problem performing this maintenance. This write-up should be valid for the 2nd generation IS350. The spark plug replacement performed here is on a 2006 Lexus IS350.